Audience Profile

This is an audience profile that I ceated on Photoshop to represent the audience of the band/genre. I included images that were best fit to the type of people that are likely to listen to this genre of music. It includes a representation of the different aspects that categorize them through images and brand names. The types of charateristics involved are:

-Fashion - the profile has images of the types of clothing and also brand names of some of the stuff that the audience are likely to wear. Also it shows a picture of hair gel which represents the 'grooming' aspect of their life.
-Food/Drink - the profile contains images of the logos for fast food chains. This represents the fast paced culture and the popularity of fast food amongst this audience.
-Technology - shows the different type of technology used such as mp3 players and laptop etc. They are a key aspect of modern life.
-Hobbies - shown partly through technology also. The profle contains the brand logos of social networking sites which are also a key aspect to the lifestyle of the audience.

Kasabian Marketing and Promotional Research

Social Networking

Kasabian have accounts on the social networking sites facebook, myspace and twitter. This is a promtional strategy to advertise albums/songs. Their myspace page features advertisment links to promote their latest album and also to direct fans to itunes. There is information about the bands latest gigs and also about any promotional things the band are doing. This help to increase the hype about them and also provides another way of advertising and getting more publicity. These pages converge with other aspects of the bands marketing and their facebook fan page is purely used for telling the audience about ticket sales, interviews with NME etc. This creates a circle type effect with the social networks linking to their music sales, magazine articles, youtube videos and the bands personal website. Everything leads on to another aspect of the bands portfolio.
Having these pages gives the audience a chance to interact with the band and post their views about them. It provides a sense of friendship and almost make some members of the audience feel a personal link to the band.

Sales

The band have a number of outlets to distribute their music and merchandise. They have their music available to download from the itunes store. It is also possible to buy their music from their personal website. Their music is also available to buy online stores such as 'Amazon' and 'Play.com' and from all high street music chains. For their latest album, Kasabian released a promo version of their song 'Vlad The Impaler' on their website which was available to download for free. This was an indifferent marketing strategy but was a clever way to gain some extra sales.
The band also sell a number of different merchandise such as posters, keyrings, T-shirts and DVDs. It is essential in the current music climate to sell these types of merchandise. The public always want a new way to connect bands or show off their love for them. DVDs especially, offer the public a chance to gain an inside look into bands and the voyeurism aspect of it appeals greatly to the audience today.

Kasabian Album Cover Comaprison

This is the album artwork for Kasabian's first album, the self titled 'Kasabian'. As you can see is a very basic consisting of a black background with an image of what appears to be a person in some sort of bandages or something of a similar nature. The album had different colour schemes for different countries. The UK had this black and white one, the USA has a black and blue one whilst Japan had a black and red one. This could be to represent the indiviual countries flag colouror part of it.

This is the album artwork for Kasabian's second album cover 'Empire'. The artwork has considerably more detail than the previous one which may be linked to the band's greater success. The cover is in the format of a playing card with the symbol K in the corner, which matches the name on the band. As th ealbum is entitled 'Empire' the theme seems to represent this with a drawing. Part of it has is of a knight or maybe a king of some sort of to match not only the hierarchy of an empire, but also the playing card (king).

This is the album cover for Kasabian's third and most recent album cover 'West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum'. This is even more different to both the previous album artworks. This has been clearly thought out and invloves a picture of the band for the first time. It shows the band dressing up for a party at the asylum whilst looking in a mirror. The costume and props had been clearly thought out seem to suggest a sort of 'whackiness' to represent the place from which they took their name, the West Riding Pauper Lunatic Asylum.